DX AUDIO SERVICE
HISTORICAL MOMENTSİ SCRIPT
for
June 1997
WOR -- Part Three
And now, Historical Moments in Radio .. a collection of stories
about the development of broadcasting on the a.m. radio dial .. and today
I have some terrific new stories about the early and middle-years of WOR
in New York. In earlier installments we talked about the station's early
years in Newark and the start of the John Gambling morning shows.
And then we traced that fantastic story about tracking the lost
dirigible, the Shenandoah by having listeners phone into WOR when they
could hear the craft's engines overhear, and providing the captain with
enough information right from the WOR broadcast to let him get his
bearings and to land safely with no loss of life.
Today we'll take another look at the early formative years with
plans to cover the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s on separate editions of this
column.
First of all, however, I was impressed this month to receive a
photograph of the radio department of the Bamberger Department Store in
Newark taken in 1922. The sales area is large with regular glass show
cases full of radios of all sorts .. the room is well lighted and
uncluttered as you would expect of a department store .. and along one
wall is a desk with a curtain next to it and a man standing by the
display cases, and a sign proclaiming "L. Bamberger and Company
Broadcasting Station, Call Letters WOR, Wavelength 355 Meters. The
caption on this photo reads, "WOR's first studio with Chief Engineer J.R.
Poppele shown at right".
The next clipping I have is from the minutes of a meeting held in
April, 1923, at the Board Room of the Bamberger Store in Newark. The
Chairman of the Board read the following statement addressed to Mr. Jack
Poppele (pronounced Puh-PELL-ee):
Mr. Poppele, it is the consensus of the Board of Directors that we
have received all of the value that we possibly can from WOR at this
point. We consider the twenty thousand dollars invested in the station
since our starting point one year ago to have been a worthwhile
advertising venture for our radio department. It has been an interesting
experiment, but we don't see much of a future for WOR and we agree that,
at this point, the best thing to do is to turn back our license to the
Government. Is there anything that you would like to say?"
I won't quote from the entire response but Mr. Jack Poppele made the
point that WOR was a medium for talking to people and he asked if that
wasn't a valuable service to be tied to the Bamberger Store. Note that
even then, none of the participants foresaw radio as an important
advertising medium.
In all, Jack must have convinced them to change their minds because,
this past February 23rd, WOR celebrated its 75th year of continuous
broadcasting in the New York metropolitan area.
Poppele had been with the station right from the start. Well, in
fact, Poppele WAS the station right from the start. It seems the
Bamberger Public Relations Director Walter Mohler had come up with the
idea of trying out a radio station as a promotional gimmick for the store
to help sell the new wireless radio sets they stocked. So an opening was
created on the staff just in time for Jack Poppele, and ex-Navy wireless
operator, to come walking in looking for job in their radio department.
That was in January 1922.
After thoroughly planning WHAT they would set up as a broadcasting
stations, and WHERE they would have it, Their next step was to climb
aboard a train bound for Washington at 8 a.m. on February 20, 1922. Jack
and his associate Orville Orvis went immediately to the Department of
Commerce building there and, by the time they took their seats on the
return train at 4 p.m., they had a license in hand for a 250-Watt radio
station to operate at 360 Meters.
The next day in Newark a surplus World War I transmitter was
connected to a temporary antenna system and on February 22, 1922, WOR
signed on the air. The first sound heard on the new station? A
recording of Al Jolson's "April Showers".
Poppele and Orvis had their hands full keeping the old radio
equipment working and playing studio engineers all at the same time.
They hired Karl Egge as the announcer; Karl slept there, ate there, and
lived there according to Poppele's notes. Lee DeForest came over on
occasion to help keep the transmitter adjusted properly.
WOR would sign on each morning for a couple of hours, then take a break
until noon .. another two hours, then a break until evening. In between
times, the three man staff worked behind the counter selling radio
receivers for L. Bamberger and Company.
On April 6, 1922 .. now that's over a full month after the first
broadcasts were put on the air .. the transmitter was moved up to the
roof of that store. By the end of 1922, two 65-foot masts had been
installed in a nearby field with an eight-wire antenna strung between
those towers. Now the station could be heard in Brooklyn, Staten Island
and even way down in Atlantic City.
So, what did they broadcast? At first it was educational and
informative talks .. story-telling for children and other creative works
cooked up by the staff on short notice. The first radio personality on
WOR was Jessie Koewing who did a daily program of jokes and anecdotes.
Another part-timer talked a local newspaper into printing a puzzle in the
paper that children would be able to solve by listening to her program.
In October 1922, WOR made an arrangement with the British
Broadcasting Corporation and, with Paul Whiteman's orchestra in the WOR
studios in Newark, the signal was picked up by the BBC and rebroadcast to
their European audience.
WOR ended 1922 with another first. Since so many people would be
receiving new radio receivers for Christmas, Poppele talked the
Bamberger's management into letting them come into the closed building on
Christmas Day and put WOR on the air.
Remarkable idea! And who do you think was willing to give up
Christmas cheer at home? Just one person -- Jack Poppele.
...and the rest is history. This is John
Bowker.